Whenever I see you, I despair of my verse.I only despair of my poemsWhen I am with you.Beautiful you are...so muchSo that when I think about what awe you strike... I gasp for breath.As my language gaspsAnd my lexicon gaspsFor breath.Deliver me from these problematics!Be less beautifulSo I can recover my poetics.Be a typical womanOf kohl, perfume, pregnancy and childbirth.Be a womanLike any other,And reconcile me with my languageAnd my tongue.

My father of a sudden from all placesDeparted for his strange and distant spaces. He had gone to call upon his GodSo He might come to our aid with staff and rod. And God took up the burden, coming soonHanging His jacket up on the hook of moon,Though nevermore will God let our father goWho left to fetch Him for us here below.

Another by the Russian Hebrew poet Haim Lensky. Many of his poems, like this one, give the impression of being "Russian poems in Hebrew" just as Preil's give the impression of being American poems in Hebrew. Even when writing — as here — about Jewish concerns, his mental universe and linguistic aesthetic seem to be Russian through and through.

Then again, what is Russian, really? That question ultimately has no better answer than that of what is really American.

Cossacks, with their habits of raiding Jewish quarters, were much feared by Russian Jews.Near the Mill
By Haim Lensky
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Glitter of metal, clatter of hoofs on the hill.
The Ataman1 to his Cossacks2 said
"The miller's a kike!"3 They leapt ahead.
Black were the boots that entered the mill.
The boots that left dripped red.

Glitter of metal, clatter of hoofs on the hill.
A Red Army lad said "what's the harm
In checking up on my dad." For a lark
He jumped and hastened into mill.
The day when he left was dark.

Glitter of metal, clatter of hoofs on the hill.
The soldier returned to his camp and flag.
The fall wind scattered the flour of the mill,
The flour from his coat, his hair that will
Never again be black.

Note:

1- Ataman — A term for a leader of cossack groups, and the official term for generals of cossack armies in the Russian Empire. The word, which is left unvocalized in the Hebrew text I have, could be interpreted either as "Hetman" or as "The Ataman" though the later makes a bit more sense.

2- Cossacks — the original actually says "haydamaks." I've chosen a term that would be more familiar in English.

3- "Kike" here translates a Russian loanword žid in the Hebrew text. Žid is not easily translated into English. The best way to describe it is that Russian žid is to "Jew" as American English nigger is to "Black." English doesn't have quite the anti-Semitic repertoire that Eastern European languages do. Many anti-semitic slurs simply have no translation that quite conveys to the English speaker the level of disrespect and hate implicit in them. This word has not been pejorative at all times in all places however (as demonstrated by e.g. the Ukrainian Jewish surname Zhydenko.) In medieval Russian it was a quite neutral term, as Polish żyd is to this day. (In Polish, benevolence and malevolence can only be shown in the plural. The benevolent plural is the native Polish plural żydzi. The malevolent plural is the Russian loan żydy.)

Back to Gabriel Preil, the most famous Hebrew poet of America, who has the distinction of being the only Hebrew poet ever to write an entire series of poems about the state of Maine.

A Celebration Beyond Things
Gabriel Preil
Translated by A.Z. ForemanA celebration beyond things, A play on worded things beyond the light, the heavy,beyond bread, table, car.This mist, for example, or that sun. (And it is not important if the New York mistis much different from that of Oregon, or for that matter, if Oregon's skyhas reservations about Maine's.) The thing of it isI'm almost ready to swear The variations in the skies can driveThe clouds themselves crazy,Or me, in any case,Attentive as I am to the gamut of shadesSeduced by the weathers ofPoems and loves.
Even the rain-sluiced stoneNow celebrates something.

Born in Lithuania, Hillel Bavli came to the United States in 1912 and attended Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he earned a doctorate in Hebrew literature. He joined the faculty of the Seminary in 1920. In 1954, he was awarded the Lamed Prize in Hebrew literature for his translation of Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra.” He died in 1961 at the age of 69 after a period of illness. Seagulls in My Heart
By Hillel Bavli
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Seagulls in my heartPeck me, squawk and draw me toward the shore. The creaking shrieking ships,The sloshing waves,Wayward breezes breathing of sulfur and salt,Bustling sailors, cussing poets. No yoke of yore, no daily decrees. Blurring mists of the ages of ages,The bonds of place and time dissolve.I'm drawn away.Seagulls in my heart.The Original:

Too often it is assumed that modern Hebrew literature is the same thing as Israeli literature. But just as many Israelis write in other languages, such as Arabic and Russian, so too have many Hebrew poets lived outside of Israel. Haim Lensky is one of many Hebrew poets who wrote on Russian soil in the early 20th century. He eventually starved to death in a labor camp for the crime of writing in Hebrew. Here translated is a sonnet about a St. Petersburg white night.

The Day Descended
By Ḥaim Lenski
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

The day descended the cold steps of stoneTo bathe in the Neva, but hardly foundItself half in before it plunged and drowned.The furrowing funeral of waves began. Complete silence descended in half-darkness Again. Then, rounded, gilded and agleamSt. Isaac's dome sank into the blue streamAs if a diving bell dropped by a harness.The Admiralty like a golden ballFeels its way through the water- spires and all.A gurgle. Then the river runs in twilight. Then up with the cadaver that they haulOut, with blue frozen lips and face of white.They know him, and they call him the white night.

This little poem poem is a subversion of the morning blessing ברוך אתה יי אלהינו מלך העולם שלא עשני אשה Blessed art Thou Lord our God, King of the Universe, that hast not made me a woman. It is not the only such subversion in medieval Hebrew letters. Qalonymos ben Qalonymos has another, much longer one, in which he too expresses the wish to have been born a woman.

On an Arab girl whom I'd love to have as a lover, whom I saw with other women kissing one another. I've known love's labor pangs, but brought forth naught. I'm in the snares of her, an Arab fawn.My soul so longs for kisses from her mouthThat I long to turn myself into a femaleFor it is women that she'll woo and kissBut I am lost. For I was born a male.

Two Countries
By José Martí
Translated by A.Z. ForemanClick to hear me recite the original SpanishI have two countries: Cuba and the night. Or are they one? No sooner does the sun withdraw its majesty than, dressed in long veils with a carnation in her hand, Cuba appears to me a silent widow. I know what that bloodstained carnation is atremble in her hand. My breast is empty. Sundered it is, and empty where the heart once was. The hour is already cometo begin dying. Night is a good time to say goodbye. Light is impediment as is the human word. The universe speaks better than man. Like a flag that callsto battle on the field, the candle's flame flutters ablaze in red. I open windowsfeeling such tightness. Crushing the carnation'spetals in silence, like a cloud befoggingthe heavens, widow Cuba passes by.Random notes on the Spanish:

La llama roja / de la vela flamea — a masterful bit of wordplay. vela means three things: "wakefulness," "candle" and "sail." Flamear means both "flare, blaze (of a candle)" and "flutter (of a sail)." Note also that vela is one gender and one vowel away from the velos (veils) in which Cuba is garbed.

The words Cuba, muda, viuda, nube are sonically linked by having the deep /u/ vowel followed by a fricative.

A song from between the two World Wars, from Werich and Voskovec's Balada z hadrů (Rag Ballad) a theatrical work drawing on the life, times and work of François Villon, but inspired as much as anything by the Great Depression. My translation is free, as is my wont when working with song lyrics. I have deemphasized the medievalism. I have included modernity-specific terms. I have, in fact, turned the song into something a bit different than what it was in Czech.

Leslie Jameson, the donor who requested this, asked that I translate one poem from a language I don't know well. Granted, Czech is quite easy for me to understand in its written form. So here it is.

Hey, Royal Highness
By Jan Werich and Jiří Voskovec
Requested by Leslie Jameson
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
(YouTube link to a cover version of this song)So here's a topic for you, researchers and scholarsOf the academy: does it say in your booksWhy it is just the poor they put in prison-collars,When rich homes have a wealth of free white collar crooks?If His Highness knew poor folks' pain, he'd deignJust once to honestly explain.Hey, Royal Highness, quit your lounging,Don rags, come down into our slum,Learn how we live by drudging, scrounging,The filth you see will set you howling,And you won't sleep till Kingdom Come.And all you sirs of moneyed breedingCome see us in our neighborhoods.See what we pay for life you're leadingHow misery turns men to thievingAnd wolves burst hungry from the woodsYou think we're nothing since we're poorer.You don't yet fear the working class.But one day you'll be ripped with horrorWhen this shout shakes your windows' glass:Hey, fat cats, pigs and portly weasels,You've had enough. Now pay the bill. Yes sirs, you brought about the evilMisery that makes wolves of people,And that makes you our juicy kill.

"The lips of dead men..."
By Yehuda Amichai
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

The lips of dead men whispered thoughtlesslyA single word of silence in the earth.Already every flower, every treeHas wildly overdone its springtime birth.Bandages are torn off, again undressedThe earth does not want healing. It wants pain.Spring is not peace at all. Spring is not restAt all. Spring is enemy terrain. We went with other lovers on patrolTo see if we could reach our goal.We were sent to the End of Rainbow Land, Though we already knew: the dead return;Though we already knew: the storm is borneOut of a young girl's open hand.

This translation was done when I was 16 or so. I'm posting it as is.From a Stormy Night
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Frontispiece

Roused by the risen storm, the night
expands and begins its climb
from otherwise lying compressed in a tight
and tiny crevice of time.
No bar of stars can end it in space,
It doesn't begin in the grove
Nor in the features of my face
Nor in the way you move.
The lanterns stammer and blindly ask:
"Are we faking light?
Has the one real thing for millennia been
The night?"

I.

In such nights you can come across a few
Future ones on the sidewalks- pale and peaked
Visages that do not acknowledge you
And mutely let you pass,
Though if they were to speak,
You’d be long forgotten
As you stood there,
And long rotten.
Yet they keep the silence of deadmen
Though they are the ones to come.
The future hasn’t been yet.
They can only plunge their faces in time’s
Suboceanic light and cannot hope
To see, but endure it a while
To discern in submersion: a speeding file
Of fish and a ripple of rope.

II

In such nights comes an opening of jails,
And through the nightmares of the guards, one after
The other, with sneered laughter,Men walk who scorn the warden’s force.
Forest!
They seek their sleep in you, to hide their tracks,
The years of sentence loaded on their backs,
Forest!

III.

In such nights opera houses fall ablaze
And like a basilisk the monstrous space
With its upholding pillars, tiers and rows,
Begins to chew on those
Pent in its den.
Women and men
Struggle and choke,
Piled on each other in the lobby’s smoke
Till stone implodes on them. Nobody knows
Who took the heaviest of cascading blows;
When someone has already shredded
His heart, his ears still ring with noises headed
For it.

IV.

In such nights, as in ages long gone by,
The hearts within the shut sarcophagi
Of bygone princes start to beat anew:
Their reinvigorated pulses hit
So hard at every coffin’s sturdy lid
As to compel the golden capsules through
Dusk and disintegrating damask cloth.
The church and spires sway blackly back and forth.
Doors shake and slap. The belfry feels each bell
Claw for a hold and hang like birds at bay.
Columns are clenched by struts and can’t give way:
As if the whole disturbed foundation lay
Upon a blind sea-turtle’s shifting shell.

V
In such nights those who have no cure
Know that: We were...
And they go think among the ill
A simple thought of good will,
Resuming where it broke off.
But of their sons the youngest may
Have to walk the loneliest way;
For these nights are
As though he’s never had a thought before:
He’s long lain in a leaden shroud,
But all his sight will soon uncloud,
And thoughts of celebration crowd his
senses...

VI

In such nights every city is alike,
Each full of flags
Caught by the bestial storm in wind that drags
It off as if by hair to be thrown
To some far off land of unknown
Hills and rills and dikes.
There in each yard the same pond lies,
By each pond the same house of stone,
In each house the same lantern’s flame,
All people look the same
As their hands cover their eyes.

VII

In such nights the minds of the dying clear,
As their hands probe through their growing hair
Whose roots shoot up from the ailing skull
In these days tired and dull,
As if to keep the sphere
Of death below.
That gesture runs through the house as though
All things were a mirror there;
And as they gently ply their hair,
Their moved hands exhaust
What strength they’d gathered from year to year,
Now lost.

VIII.

In such nights my dear sister grows some more
Who was before me, and before me died.
Many such nights since then have passed me by:
She will be beautiful. Soon someone’s sure
To marry her.

Yonatan Ratosh was born in 1908 in Warsaw, and emigrated to Palestine in 1921. In 1939 he founded the Canaanite movement, which rejected both Judaism and Zionism in favor of a new "Canaanite" identity which was, as Yatosh believed, more organic to the Fertile Crescent, and which sought to liberate all who lived the region from the stranglehold of Abrahamic monotheism. The Canaanite movement cultivated an archaic Biblical (or, theoretically, pre-Biblical) diction modeled to some degree on the language of Ugaritic epic (c.f. in this poem the Ugariticizing terms קרש מלך אב שנים and נרת אלים השמש in this poem. Both of which are identical to phrases found in Anat's lamentation for Baˁl in the Ugaritic Baal cycle.)

This dirge was written for the poet's father, and is envisioned as a hymn for the pall-bearers. It describes how the dead father is carried westward beyond the sea to the dwelling of El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon.

The title of this poem in Hebrew is Et Nišmat, literally "The Soul of." (The form with et is in the accusative, and cannot normally stand alone in Hebrew anymore than the accusative form Requiem can stand alone in Latin.) It comes from the beautiful prayer El Mole Raḥamim "God Full of Mercy." That prayer is recited by a cantor at Jewish funerals, and is also traditionally recited during the walk up to a person's grave. Line 7 begins Et Nišmat "The Soul Of" followed by a place where one is to utter the actual name of the deceased. This poem is an alternative to that prayer, a polytheistic (neo-)Canaanite dirge.

I felt it appropriate to make the recording for this poem using an archaizing pronunciation of Hebrew. In addition to the pharyngeal fricatives, I distinguish כ from ק in all cases, and realize the historical geminates as such.

I could make many notes about the resonant vocabulary here used. Two examples will have to suffice, since I haven't my usual commentary energy at the moment.
The first words of this poem are a direct quote from Psalm 85:14 tsédeq lep̱anav yehalleḵ veyasem leḏéreḵ peˁamav "Righteousness shall go before him, and shall set the way of his steps." Here, however, Justice/righteousness is personified.
The word עולם ˁolam means not only "world" but also "eternity" or "all that one lives through." In the phrase leˁolamo "to his eternity" it means something more like "to his repose." (בית עולם "house of the world/eternity" is a term for "graveyard.")

Dirge
By Yonatan Ratosh
Requested by Victor Leibowitz
Translated by A.Z. ForemanClick to hear me recite the original HebrewRighteousness shall go before himMaking clear his wayRighteousness the shield-bearer before him in the darknessRighteousness shall walk before him.Now to the God of the Sea WindsNow to the God of the West SpiritsIn the heart of the twin abyssesIn the heart of heaven and earthTo the God whose wing makes evening gloam,Whose beard is the grey of seething foam.Up with the lamp of the Gods you've comeNow you courseDown with the lamp of the Gods, the sunTo its source. Unto the end of all mighty watersThe fountainhead of all the world's earthOf every road ascending to the heavensOf every road descending to Sheol.Unto the God of the Sea WindsUnto the God of the West SpiritsIn the timbered hall, the father of timeIn whose hand is the soul of all flesh At whose feet bow all living things.This man has knownAffliction and its rod.This man has ceased his labors Bound for home. Righteousness shall go before himMaking clear his wayRighteousness the shield-bearer before him in the darknessRighteousness shall walk before him.Into the heart of the twin abyssesInto the heart of heaven and earthTo the timbered hall of the father of years,Whose hand gave the crown of BaalWhose hand gave the might of AnatWhose hand gave the wisdom of KotharWhose hand gave the good of AstarteAt his right hand — the horn of BaalAt his left hand — the weight of Mot.Almighty-pinioned ElWho shade the corners of the worldWho deal justice in your depths,Justice in heaven and earth, Bless him who returns to his kin.Bless the soul of Your servantGone foreverTo his repose. Righteousness shall go before himMaking clear his wayRighteousness the shield-bearer before him in the darknessRighteousness shall walk before him.

From A Day In The Hands of the StormtroopersExecution
By Abraham Sutzkever
Translated by A.Z. ForemanClick to hear me recite the original Yiddish As I must, as they order, I'm digging a hole.I search in the dirt for what might console. A dig and a cut. A small worm is shakingAway below me. My heart is breaking. My spade cuts him through. Then miraculouslyOne severed worm is two. Then three.Another cut: they are four. Can it beThat all these lives were created by me? The sun comes through the dark of my moodA conviction sets my arm firm: If a worm does not succumb to the spade, Are you any less than a worm? - May 22, 1942

Abraham Samuel Schwartz (1876-1957) spent the majority of his life as a medical doctor with a busy practice in the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn, until retiring at the age of 77. He was the elder brother of Israel Jacob Schwartz, the Yiddish modernist poet and translator (author, incidentally, of קענטאָקי Kentucky, a Yiddish epic about the adaptation of Lithuanian Jews to life in rural America. You can download it in Yiddish here.)

He was born outside Vilnius, in Lithuania. His father was a learned Hebrew scholar, and Schwartz himself quickly excelled in Talmudic studies. He broke with tradition when he discovered secular literature, first in Yiddish and Hebrew, then in Russian. He arrived in New York at the age of 24 (followed by his brother four years later) with the hope of making his living with literary work, but soon found this impossible. He obtained a medical degree, and thereafter began his practice. He continued to write poetry during spare moments of respite from tending the ill.

His style, however, was out of step with the dominant trends of Hebrew verse outside the US. The fact that, like most American Hebrew poets of the period, he never abandoned his Ashkenazi Hebrew dialect in verse, was a major strike against him. The fact that he stood quite apart from dominant trends of Hebrew modernism also sealed the fate of his reception.

Schwartz's work, rejected by publishers never saw the light of day in his lifetime. Two years after his death, it took the combined sympathies and effort of Zalman Shazar and Simon Halkin to see a single (and thus far the only) volume of his work to publication in Israel.

Aspects of sound-play relying on Ashkenazic Hebrew can be found in the poem translated here. For example, חולים sick and חולם dreaming may sound somewhat similar in Israeli Hebrew but they are more so in Ashkenazic, and in some registers and dialects of Ashkenazic they are identical. Schwartz himself may have pronounced both identically.

Among the Sick
By Abraham Samuel Schwartz
Translated by A.Z. ForemanI walk among the sick as I have ever done: in painLies Susie silent, thin and delicate.And her emaciated face exudes her childhood grace
And charm. But her white blood cells seal her fate. It gladdens me to see a wakeful smile on Leah's lips. She's been asleep in fever all week long. Although her heart disease is chronic, and there is no cure,If she takes better care, she might live long.I'm satisfied with seventy-year-old Spiegel. He has stoppedVomiting blood. His appetite is back. His stomach growths have turned out to be non-malignant ulcersWhich medicine can easily combat. I pause with Schur, a young man with deep eyes. He dreams of light,For all the blood occlusion in his heart.He asks "Doc, isn't it my time already to get up"I lie "A little while and then you'll start."Sometimes I stop and suddenly hear a repressed thoughtThat taunts me in my heart and whispers: "thisWhole world of yours is hanging by a hair aboveThe screaming depths of an abyss. You're like a man who plays the seer with fate of hidden worlds,Hovering between great hope and dread.You weigh with a physician's balance: will he live or die? You're day-full, tired of lives being swept off to the dead. You're pleased that with your mighty effort you can paste togetherSome scattered shards of the frail human urn,So that it can contain a few more stolen drops of lifeBefore fate's mysteries shatter it in turn? What of the pain in your own heart, what of your tear for thatDreamer of light when light departs his eye,And for the charming girl who soon will be the food of worms,If all of humankind were soon to die?"

The Circus
By Annabelle Farmelant
Translated by A.Z. ForemanI have grown tame cat claws.When the wheel revolves for my next incarnationI will returnAs a lion.I will re-turn time to circa the Roman circusAnd they will set me loose in the ring. All beasts walk on two feetAnd I will dig my claws into the flesh of allThe numbhearts, and the numskullsAnd puke my shame in their faces. A typical shame I swallowed in secret.The snow has long meltedThe snowdrop long died outBut I can never blacken even the nameOf shameSo typical, so pure and bright. You the numbhearts and numskullsWith hearts once ocean-vastShrank back into the muck of stupidity,Minds brilliantAs adamant gemstonesSwitched to bogus rhinestonesThat used to be the cornerstoneOf Empire. Now shout not: "Ave, long live Caesar!" His stoney pityShall never be moved. Shout not: "Ave, long live Caesar!"All the Caesars are long dead. When the next revolution cyclesThe wheel will run faster, and the cornerStone will spinTogether with EmpireYou'll be a tail, a chariotDragged on and onWhile the buffoon in jest arisesTo the throne.The Original: